40 Comments

KRISTIN! Thank you so much for sharing this with your people. Your preface was so very kind. I hope to meet you someday. I've been a fan since reading your book.

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Ryan, I am sorry you have a dad who may be hard to be proud of...Please be assured that he has a son of whom this father and a host of others would be proud.

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

Thanks for sharing this post. I have heard some of these defenses, from the evangelicals I know. Most recently, the “policies over personalities” defense has been most prominent. It’s just another way to make excuses for dismissing Trump’s moral failures. Pathetic.

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author

Yes, "policies over personality" is what I'm hearing most. To which I say, "which policies?!?"

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

Exactly! Tariffs? No more income tax? Using the military, against perceived enemies from within? Mass deportation camps? Disbanding the department of education?

To those in the “burn it all down” caucus, I ask, do you know what will replace it, and do you trust him to rebuild it? If you burn it all down, chaos ensues. He wants that, but we should not.

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Thank you so much for your writing! I'm WAY too late to the party, but finally reading Jesus and John Wayne. Joel Webbon's church is about 20 minutes away from my house. Last year, my husband's insurance agent invited us to visit it...I had never heard of him then, but when I read on the church's home page it invited anyone "looking for a biblical church with a spine" to visit, alarm bells went off.

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

WOW. This is so well written and took so much time. Very thankful for Ryan putting the pieces together like this and bringing receipts!

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

This is actually the very church that the settlers "brought" to the "new world". Ask any Native American survivor of boarding schools or their descendants. So, the 35 tiles on the Roys Report page are just the ones who have been caught or exposed. I so appreciated Ryan's statement "If you’re shocked by statements like these from faith leaders, I’m jealous." for I can remember what it was before knowledge like that came into my life. But maybe that is a natural step in our maturing in our faith. An ever increasing intense light into the unconscious aspects of what we were surrounded by as a babe in Christ. Again, I'm so thankful for J&JW and your work, Kristin. Time to start my 5th reading as my copy is still in pretty good shape!

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Excellent throughout. A huge service to us. My only point of departure is to urge votes against Trump via votes for Harris.

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That's where my courage ran out. I am voting for Harris/WAlz.

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

Excellent!! I wish all voters would read it BEFORE they blindly vote Republican.... It, of course, is also terribly sad. How can we have gotten to this point in our American history? Even so, come quickly Lord Jesus....

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

Such a truthfully well written article. It validated my not voting for Trump. Thank you for sharing this post.

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Thanks so much for posting this Kristin. I'm one of the co-presenters of the smallVOICE podcast based in Scotland, and we've been watching (and chatting about) the build-up to the US election with a fair bit of dismay. I was in Georgia in September and came across your book Jesus and John Wayne which helped me understand the situation with regards to the evangelical (white) church a lot better.

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

The problem with voting for Jo Jorgensen in 2020 was that any vote not cast for Biden was, for all practical purposes, a vote for Trump. That is still the same in this 2024 election. I hope voters who don’t want Trump in the White House will remember that and vote accordingly. Thank-you for excellent writing…with all my heart.

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I'm voting for Harriz/Walz. I didn't put that in the original piece.

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

Thank-you so much for letting me know this!

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Thank you Kristin & Ryan. While watching "For Our Daughters" on the big screen this past Monday night, I realized how deeply I hold abuse against women in the church. After the film, while I sat in reflection, my partner asked me if I was alright... I think this stuff is hitting part of my being that is awakening me to being an advocate in new ways.

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

This is so good! Ryan is a gifted and well-researched writer. 100%!!

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I lose it every time I hear someone say he tells it like it is. Then I watch a historian like Victor Hansen Davis proclaim on Trumps mastery of communication. I lose it again!

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Oct 31Liked by Kristin Du Mez

Excellent! Thank you for sharing this! I want to shout this from the mountain top! "America, please wake up!"

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As Christians, we profess to believe in the idea of a "holy stump"—that God is always working, even in the face of a disaster, to rescue human beings from themselves. Perhaps the most familiar expression of this idea is in the messianic prophecy of Isaiah 11 that we typically read during Advent: "A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse."

I am coming to believe that the church in America will face a severe pruning—and that this is probably a good thing. The defense of sexual predators and the silencing and shaming of their female victims is a telling symptom of a much deeper rot. So is the fact that 80% of "evangelicals" say they support a rapist who is utterly hostile to the Gospel. Taken as a whole, the tree of American Christianity is bearing poisonous fruit. Young people and women are running from it as fast as they can. Maybe a drastic pruning, such as the Catholic Church brought upon itself in Ireland, will enable something to grow back that is truer to the way of Jesus.

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Do you have undecided or persuadable family or friends? I’ve put together an article featuring the reasons many high-profile conservative Republicans have given for why they cannot support Trump. I’ve gotten some great feedback from folks who’ve called it "incredible," "stunning," and "compelling." They've appreciated how easy it is to read and how clear the message is. My intent was for this to be a resource for all, so please share it far and wide! https://michaeltenbrink.substack.com/p/dont-take-my-word-for-ittake-theirs

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